A statement of a soul | Raphael x Reader

14. An experiment

You get almost no sleep this night, plagued by the nightmares filled with the visions of your dead comrades. You try to keep your head up high, but in truth, the insomnia is getting a lot worse and you realize it when seemingly out of nowhere, you appear in the middle of the cobbled path with the backpack straps wrapped around your shoulders.

You rub your eyes and try to recall your journey from underneath the bridge, all the way to this moment, but your efforts are unsuccessful. Instead, you fetch the map from your robe and check your coordinates, making sure that you are indeed on the right course.

After a few minutes, you resume your journey, taking a sip of water from the canteen before putting it back inside a bag wrapped around your waist.

You look around the road seeing nothing besides the muddy, soaked dirt with brownish grass and hearing just the wet splashes of your shoes sliding on the terrain.

You close your eyes and focus on your footing, shifting awareness to the way your soles sink into the soaked ground and your muscles tighten, preventing your body from losing balance. It is very rare for a monk like you to disassociate so badly that you find yourself unable to recall events from the last hour.

'Was I dreaming of Raphael or was he actually there?' you think and rub your neck, reminding yourself of the sensation of him pulling on a leash.

You sigh, realizing that this was not a dream and the devil really was there. You look down on your marching feet for some time, before straightening your spine and raising your chin elegantly.

The last words you've heard from the man are making you a bit anxious. What is the thing that he already knows about your near future, that you yourself aren't aware of? You are certain that he read your note and possibly all of the letters you received from the Dawnmasters if not more, yet you can't help but think the meeting is not what he was referring to when saying there is a long day ahead. Your intuition tells you that the hint was something concerning the curse.

You nib on your bottom lip in thought, adjusting the backpack on your shoulders.

'Dear father is growing impatient,' you quote him, sinking back to your thoughts.

You now know that Mephistopheles suspected or maybe even counted on Raphael to take you down the second you rescued him from Cania. But this is not what happened. Although, all of your encounters with Raphael so far left you a bit confused and usually frustrated, you are aware that the man definitely doesn't want to kill you. It is interesting to know that his father misjudged him in this way. You'd think that the Lord of Cania, being a literal ancient creature, which probably remembers the dawn of time, doesn't know his own son well enough to use the whole situation with the rescue mission to his own advantage. But then again, knowing someone implies that the person A put time and effort into getting to know the person B, and you know damn well that Mephistopheles doesn't treat Raphael with any kind of respect. Respect? That's an overstatement. He doesn't treat him like an actual living being in the first place. So, on a second thought, such thing being overlooked doesn't seem so unnatural or unique.